View cases - Stewart McKelvey

Page: 68choose to continue working. If three to ten percent of employees over 65 were to continue workingfor an additional three years, the average length of a career would only rise by one to four months -hardly enough to upset deferred compensation schemes.[260] Dr. Kesselman also questions the premise that deferred compensation provides a usefulincentive for employers to invest in training their employees at the beginning of their careers,allowing employers to benefit from that investment over the career of the individual. He notes thatthe more rapid obsolescence of skills in today’s workplace means that employee training has2011 FC 120 (CanLII)become an ongoing process.[261] The third flaw in the traditional economic analysis of mandatory retirement identified by Dr.Kesselman is that it fails to consider the cost that compulsory mandatory retirement imposes on therest of society.[262] Older employees forced to leave their employment pay less in income and other taxes.Some begin drawing public pension benefits earlier than they might otherwise have done, and fewerbenefits get clawed-back through the tax system. The decrease in tax revenues and increase inpublic pension claims will impose a bigger drain on systems already under strain as the populationages. In this regard, Dr. Kesselman notes that while only 7.6% of the Canadian population was over65 in the mid-1960s, they made up 12% of the population by 2004 and are projected to make up23% of the population by 2030.